The Good Kind
by Fallen Ark Angel
Summary: Snow brings back a lot of memories, but it also makes some better ones. - One-shot.


Snow always had a deafening affect. For certain, there was some scientific explanation for it, but honestly, late at night, out in the forest, it felt left up to far more magical implication.

The log was rotting, maybe, but sturdy enough to sustain the weight of them both though it did let out a bit of a crack, at first, in the deadened night, when they first sat. They both shared a look, him from behind the bars of his visor and her with the bright blue eyes so many people associated with her older sister, but to him, no. No. The younger definitely wore it better.

It was strange, honestly, to be forced to realize that, while her hair was such a shocking white in normal settings, there, surrounded by fresh snowfall, this was hardly the case. Rather, her hair matched an off coloring of it, missing out on the exact shade, beaten out finally by something other than her pale flesh.

There was something about it though. The cold. The quiet. The stillness. It brought about a silence to the two otherwise chatty mages and, as he rolled one for them, there, in the middle of nowhere, lost to the world and, hopefully soon, to themselves as well, it felt like they were disconnected. Disjointed. From the others. From everyone.

Her eyes followed his little wooden babies as they floated about, catching the stray few snowdrops as they drifted variably down from above. She liked them, a lot, he knew. More than most people. Treated them as what they were; extensions of past selves. Ghosts, almost. Trapped and regressed, but people at one time, one place, maybe. Rather than the mind trick most saw them as, unreal and unfeeling. He could tell she knew, the first time he saw her cup one in her hands, calling him by the exact right name, something only his two best friends were able to do.

"They mean a lot to you," she'd remarked to him once with a bit of a smile. "So of course they mean a lot to me too."

A time existed, when he was sad and lonely and all by himself, other than the five little souls that only he saw, unable then to bind them to their little wooden bodies, just a boy himself, but a knowing one. A reverent one. Who knew better than to discard those where lost. Like him.

Like her.

In their own ways.

When his lighter caught, the sound felt amplified and she jumped, he could feel it on the rotting log, but it only made him grin a bit, taking the first puff with a relieved sigh. It felt like it had been too long, since it had just been the two of them, there. Not alone, the babies were there, but a special kind of alone that only the two of them were able to declare and when she reached over to flick the lighter herself, to get a puff of her own, he was more than happy to oblige.

They both had so many memories of it. Forests. Different ones, of course, but trapped in frigid winters.

He could recall with hesitation the different fires he sat around, the wooden traveling carts cold interiors, and the roar. Of the animals. From their cages. He never got to help much, he'd never been old enough, really, just got in the way, when they'd settle in somewhere. To drive the stakes into the ground. Help raise the tents. But he could see it in his mind, ornate and old, filled with memories of it's own, as the canvas was raised high into the late night or early morning, there to greet and surprise the distant towns as it dotted their horizon now, but so familiar to him.

So familiar.

Warm.

In the coldest of winters.

She'd told him before, in hushed whispers, about her own experiences. Not those happy times, her sister and brother liked to reminisce aloud, remind her of, because she'd been too little, they were certain, and wanted to remind her. About the bright sun and hot summers. The blooming springs and the crisp winters. Frolicking through the field, helping Papa with his work, collecting ingredients for Mama and the supper.

They didn't speak on the winters. When it was so cold, in their little shack, that the stove wasn't hot enough, was unable to be, to heat the tiny wooden enclosure. She remembered huddling with them, her siblings, for warmth. Papa spending all day and night out in the forest, hunting for anything, trading away everything.

It was faint. The memories. But present.

She didn't know hunger like that. Anymore. And hadn't since she was an orphaned child, cast out of her village due to her sister's sin of being a savior. She hoped not to again. But if pain faded with time, she hated to thing how strong it was, over two decades prior now, truly, if she could still feel it so clearly.

"They protect you," he'd remarked to her, once, when she accused her siblings of shielding such things from her. "And maybe themselves too. A bit."

Because it was easier.

For them to remember the warm summer evenings, laying on soft grass, counting the stars above. Just like it was him, to remember in great detail the intricate patter in the faded tent canvas, than it faded, slowly, from the horizon, from his view, to never be seen again.

On his next inhale, he had to agree, sometimes things were best kept in the past. Left behind.

But when she fell into him, it was with a slight giggle, maybe, not much, and his smile returned, eyes finding the floating babies himself though, slowly, he found himself watching the stars with more amazement. They looked so bright, so distant, and when she took note of his stare, she turned her own eyes upwards as well, looking past the few tree tops and to the blackness, dotted with bright white dots, and wondered, if maybe, someone, the others saw these too. That she left behind. In the world she never belonged.

With no sense of urgency or even immediate necessity, it really felt like they'd stepped out of time, almost, into one of their own. Eventually, of course, they had to get back. They'd always have to get back. Her to her siblings and friends, there, in the hall, while his only two would worry over him, if he was away for two long, he didn't wanna be away for two long, but where sound didn't reach them and only the stars and moon spied them, it really felt like eternity.

The good kind.

"We should really," she remarked as he pushed his visor up, to stare better, at the stars above, "do this more often. Bickslow."

"Aye, Lissy," he snickered some, tongue tumbling from his mouth and catching a few straggler snowflakes. "We really should."

* * *

**I finished up all my Miraxus stuff til the end of the year, so I thought I'd write some other stuff in the interim. Mira and Laxus are my favorite, but Lisanna and Bickslow are pretty close behind. **


End file.
